What is Table Extraction?
The process of detecting tabular regions in a PDF and exporting them as structured rows and columns — usually into Excel or CSV.
Table extraction combines layout analysis (finding rows, columns, cell boundaries) with text or OCR extraction. Quality depends on whether the PDF has real table structure, ruled lines, or only visual alignment. Scanned tables additionally require OCR before extraction.
Also known as
- table OCR
- PDF table parsing
Related PDF tools
Related terms
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) — OCR is the technology that converts text inside an image or scanned PDF into machine-readable, searchable, editable text.
- Image-Based PDF — A PDF whose pages are scanned images with no underlying text layer — meaning text cannot be searched or selected.
- Searchable PDF — A PDF that contains an invisible text layer behind the scanned image, making the document searchable and selectable.
Category: Conversion